Windows 8 Is Taking The Wrong Approach To Competing With The iPad

Microsoft
let developers and the public take a look at Windows
8, which will work on both tablets and PCs. The software
is beautiful and technically very impressive in many ways but it
is taking the wrong approach to compete with the
iPad and
other tablets that are disruptive to Microsoft’s legacy PC
business.

The key idea behind Windows 8 is that it will be the same OS on
tablets and PCs, except with different skins and tweaks for each.

Here’s why this is wrong:

Tablets are a different form factor and interface
paradigm from the PC, so software made from the ground up for
tablets is always going to be superior to software made for
both. The idea behind a tablet/PC OS is that it’s more
powerful: Microsoft showed off Windows 8 tablets running
advanced software like Photoshop
and Excel. But this is the wrong way to look at this. Image
editing software that’s built from the ground up for tablets is
going to be better for tablets.

Tablet software is DISRUPTIVE to PC software, which is
what Microsoft does. The key point of disruptive
products is that they are in many ways technically
inferior to the products they replace and yet
grab market share because they’re better in one or a
few key respects. For tablets, this is ease of use.
Photo editing software for tablets is always going to be less
powerful than Photoshop but it’s probably going to be more
intuitive, built from the ground up for a touch interface where
users can manipulate things with their fingers. Apple’s
GarageBand music app for the iPad is much less powerful than
other music apps. But it’s also much more intuitive and a
pleasure to use. By showing off how Windows 8 tablets are going
to have more “powerful” software than iOS
tablets, Microsoft is stuck in the classic innovator’s
dilemma: it’s doubling down on the features of its
offering that are getting disrupted instead of trying to
disrupt the disruptors.

PCs are still much more powerful than tablets for doing specific
tasks like writing, spreadsheets and heavy-duty professional
work. But tablets are disruptive to the PC paradigm by
making interaction with software more simple and intuitive, at
the expense of “power-features” that most users don’t want or
need anyway. (Has your grandmother ever complained that
her PC doesn’t have enough advanced features?) And if they are
with iPads at $500, they’re only going to be more so with
Android
tablets at $200, which will be the reality by the time Windows 8
ships.

Right now tablets are mostly great for media consumption (which
is already most of what people do on computers), but as tablet
software improves, tablets will become more convenient and better
for more and more use cases and, in classic disruptive fashion,
relegate the PC to specialized tasks, just like the PC did to the
mainframe in the 1970s and 1980s.

Tablets are the future of computing. This means that
tablet-specific software will win. Instead of doubling down on
its PC business and trying to PC-ify tablets, Microsoft should
double down on tablet-first software.

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